Red Bull face their own 'silly season' as Daniel Ricciardo's F1 return ramps up Sergio Perez pressure

Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo — Photo: © LAT Images

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Red Bull face their own 'silly season' as Ricciardo's F1 return ramps up Perez pressure

Red Bull are facing their own internal F1 seat battle as 'silly season' kicks-off

Jim Kimberley

Tuesday 25 July 2023 13:27

Daniel Ricciardo's Formula 1 return signalled the start of this year's silly season, and with Sergio Perez's 2023 struggles, the Australian is still a central part of what will happen at Red Bull's two teams for 2024.

Max Verstappen is the only one certain to stay put in the four seats under Christian Horner and Helmut Marko's jurisdiction, with the other three set for a silly season subplot of their own.

It's the early days of Ricciardo's comeback. Yet his positive albeit point-less debut in AlphaTauri colours suggests we will have a fight on our hands for the car alongside Verstappen's in the Red Bull garage next year.

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Here's how the main protagonists fared in Hungary in their fight for the drive.

Sergio Perez

The weekend couldn't have started worse for Checo, with the uncertainty around his future getting in the Mexican's head, leading to an FP1 crash.

Even with Horner proudly stating his team are well within the cost cap for last year, crashing some of the most expensive cars on the planet doesn't help any constructor to stay under budget.

Nonetheless, Perez's weekend improved day by day, and he broke the spell that kept him from reaching Q3 since Monaco in the Alternative Tyre Allocation qualifying session.

Whether taking P9 in this year's best car and qualifying behind both Alfa Romeos is worthy of celebration is another story, but it was a stumble in the right direction after his recent woeful Q1 and Q2 exits.

The podium finish represents his second rostrum trip in six grands prix Sundays, and he earned it after another race of fighting through the pack rather than cruising to a trophy.

If the ends justify the means, then a costly repair bill and additional strategic stress on the pit wall are all worth it for a P3 finish.

However, with Verstappen crossing the line with a 33-second margin, one suspects this wasn't the weekend Perez needed for Horner and Marko to think he's the best man for the job.

Daniel Ricciardo

Anyone expecting a shock result of Ricciardo beating Perez was kidding themselves, with the Mexican racing a record-breaking RB19 and the honey badger driving a bottom-of-the-league AT04.

Yet, a P13 qualification in the first race back at the Faenza-based outfit meant Danny Ric could see the drive he covets just two rows ahead on the starting grid.

Guanyu Zhou's messy start meant there was more work for Ricciardo than there might've been if he had stayed out of trouble at Lap 1, but he performed well enough from the back of the pack.

There weren't any super strategies at play at AlphaTauri that so often helped the Aussie to his wins in Red Bull overalls, and the pit wall instead made him run 40 laps on medium Pirellis – the most laps on a single set of anyone in the race.

Despite the Turn 1 incident and his team's questionable interpretation of the tyre compounds (he also did his shortest stint on hards!), Ricciardo out-qualified and finished higher than Yuki Tsunoda.

It's perhaps too early to say whether his "I never left" quote from his 2021 Monza win could apply to his 2023 return, but he qualified at the car's maximum and didn't crash into the wall like a certain driver under the microscope.

If this pacey and consistent weekend was the rusty Ricciardo with even more to come, it spells danger for Perez.

Yuki Tsunoda

Whether Tsunoda was ever in line to jump up to replace Perez is an unknown, let alone any possibility of leaping forward in the middle of the Mexican's contract.

Nonetheless, the Japanese racer will be disappointed to come second best in Hungary to Ricciardo at a team where he should feel like the main attraction after three years of partnership.

Qualifying was tight — record-equalling tight in Q3 — and those slim margins were even there in Q1, where just 1.2s covered the entire field.

Tsunoda missed out on Q2 by just 0.013s, and the man that took that cut-off time was his new stablemate Ricciardo to rub salt into the wound.

Ricciardo ended up as the last running driver after his adventures with the Alpine pair, but he still finished 15s ahead of Tsunoda by the chequered flag, even with the odd long-stint medium tyre strategy.

With Nyck de Vries as the unknown part of the AT04 equation up until now, Tsunoda was the barometer of the 2024 AlphaTauri's speed.

Should Ricciardo show that it wasn't just De Vries who couldn't extract all the AT04's potential, it's not Perez's seat Tsunoda needs to worry about but his own.

With Ayumu Iwasa having another strong F2 weekend, Liam Lawson excelling in Super Formula, and Ricciardo out-performing his teammate on debut, Tsunoda's future has never looked so uncertain.